"The Tragedy of Macbeth" review — Joel Coen crafts visually immaculate Shakespeare
“By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes . . .”
It wouldn’t be incorrect to assume that a large percentage of the English-speaking world is at least somewhat familiar with William Shakespeare’s Macbeth. The Scottish Play begins drenched in lightning and rain with the cackling of witches and the familiar question, “When shall we three meet again?” There’s a king, a rebellion, and an invasion. We hear the title character’s name before we ever meet him. “Brave Macbeth,” or so he’s called by the Sargeant who delivers the news to King Duncan. Macbeth has won the battle.
Some 416 years after the original text was first performed, Joel Coen’s The Tragedy of Macbeth is next in line in a long history of adaptations of the play. James Stuart Blackton first took a crack at the job in 1908, but the first notable adaptation was Orson Welles’ 1948 film. Akira Kurosawa and Roman Polanski each took turns adapting the play in 1957 and 1971 respectively. The part has been played by Welles, Toshiro Mifune, Michael Fassbender, Patrick Stewart, among a list of many others. It’s also a story that pushes well beyond cultural limitations. In fact, the two most recent adaptations of the play prior to Coen’s version, Veeram (2016) and Joji (2021), are a pair of Indian films. Coen, taking part in the ongoing discussion, presents a version that is wholly his own. It’s visually arresting and is led by some excellent performances. It’s haunting, dark, and macabre — the perfect mood for the foul story.
We’re first introduced to Macbeth as he journeys home from the battle accompanied by his friend Banquo. Along the desolate road, evoking images not dissimilar to, but all the more surreal than Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood (1957) and Welles’ Macbeth (1948), they encounter the three “Weird Sisters,” all played by the incredible Kathryn Hunter. “Hail, thane of Glamis,” they say of Macbeth’s current title. “Hail, thane of Cawdor,” they say of the title he will take. “All hail, Macbeth, thou shalt be king hereafter!” Macbeth is taken aback. He’s not king. He’s not in line to be king. He’s an old man now, surely his ability to become king is drawing to a close. But words of the prophecies to both Banquo and Macbeth start to come true. Eventually, Macbeth decides to take his destiny into his own hands.
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When Denzel Washington first steps into frame as Macbeth, he is not the man we are expecting to see. Washington, aged sixty-six, is far older than most who have played the character. His hair is noticeably grey, his skin is starting to wrinkle. His wife, Lady Macbeth, played by Frances McDormand, sixty-four, is much the same. She’s old and childless. She’s less emotional and more quietly conniving. By casting these two aged legends of cinema, The Tragedy of Macbeth creates a shift in how its audience connects to the material. Gone is the youthful vigour and naïve over-confidence of the twenty and thirty-year-old Macbeths passed. It’s all replaced now by the introspective regret of an old man who sees one last chance to claim greatness.
Coen’s new version of Macbeth, the first film he’s made without the involvement of his long-time collaborator and brother Ethan Coen, is a distilled and stripped-down telling of the story. The grandeur and colour of Justin Kurzel’s Macbeth (2015) are replaced by discomforting black-and-white and nightmarish landscapes. The intense anger of Mifune’s performance in Throne of Blood is replaced by Washington’s solemn world-weary glances. The film stays faithful to Shakespeare’s text but isn’t bound by its history. Shot entirely on a Los Angeles soundstage, the film feels supernatural and otherworldly. Macbeth arrives home in Inverness, although his castle isn’t much of a home. The castles of Inverness and Dunsinane are empty and hollow. They provide an impression of the past without ever fully committing to a specific time and place. It’s a distinctly contemporary vision of Shakespeare. The times and places that The Immortal Bard’s work evokes are often lost on audiences now and the stories themselves have found a new life outside of those contexts. The film is drenched in a thick, overwhelming atmosphere of dread and foreboding which makes Shakespeare’s lyrical, archaic dialogue all the more rich and engaging.
There are so many specific and memorable moments from the film which interpret familiar beats of the story with a fresh idea. The murder of King Duncan at the hands of Macbeth is framed with such intensity and performed brilliantly by Washington and Brendan Gleeson. The murder of Macduff’s wife and child is blocked and performed with anger and cruelty. With the age and stillness of Washington’s character, Macbeth feels much more cruel and calculating. The return of Hunter’s witches in the film’s second half is especially memorable. The shots of Hunter’s characters towering high above Washington are delightfully unnerving, adding the horror back that is often lost in clinical dissections of the text in a high school classroom. There’s a moment of specific brilliant art design towards the end of the film when we see Macbeth fight the Young Siward in the halls of Dunsinane. The walls of the castle have faded and the pillars in the background of the set, either by matte, digital effect, or some other camera trickery, have become the forest.
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| Director Joel Coen and Frances McDormand on set. © A24/Apple. |
The visual design of The Tragedy of Macbeth is impeccable. The expressionist-influenced sharp lighting and bare, stark sets might be more akin to Fritz Lang or F. W. Murnau than the man behind Fargo (1996) and The Big Lebowski (1998). The cinematography of Bruno Delbonnel is harsh and moody, but frames characters with distinction and personality. Production designer Stefan Dechant’s work goes hand-in-hand with the brilliance of Delbonnel. The choice to shoot the film on a soundstage works remarkably well here. The film reads as a sort of marriage between stage and screen. The artifice is an homage to the inherent theatricality of the text, but the filmic elements make it feel all the more engrossing. But these dramatic visual choices are for more than just style, as stylish as they are. They further serve as compliments and expressions of the film’s central ethos.
The Tragedy of Macbeth, Coen’s nineteenth feature film, sees the filmmaker go back to basics. It’s the work of a legendary filmmaker in a new stage of his career wanting to break from what he has done before. He’s no longer working with the partner who has defined his relationship with Hollywood — “the Coen brothers” is perhaps a more famous name than “Joel Coen” — and is now on his own. Coen goes back to the source. He goes back to the early days of film with a 1.37:1 aspect ratio, black-and-white photography, and the theatre-ish sets and to the early days of drama. He doesn’t try to reinvent Shakespeare, for all its distinction, The Tragedy of Macbeth is an incredibly faithful adaptation, but wants to use to it ground himself again. Shakespeare is a universal force and Coen’s film reminds the audience why the man keeps sticking around.
On a final note: if this film becomes the new favourite of desperate English teachers trying to keep their students entertained, I think they’ve made an excellent choice.
Score: 4
The Tragedy of Macbeth is now streaming on Apple TV+ and playing in select theatres.
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